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Arctic Passage Opens Challenges for U.S. Military

Thinning Polar Ice Expected to Give Way to New Commercial Waterways and Resource-Rich Frontier

The amount of polar ice in the Arctic shrinks in the summer and returns in the winter. Shown here is how much the ice retreated by late summer 2012. Scientists forecast the ice will further extend its annual retreat, opening new routes between Asia and Europe for commercial shippers by midcentury. (Source: U.S. Navy)

SEATTLE—The 40-year-old Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star returned to the Arctic Ocean this summer after seven years in semiretirement, charging into a thinning polar ice sheet that U.S. defense officials predict will give way to new commercial waterways and a resource-rich frontier by midcentury.

Navy officials say the Arctic will give the U.S. its first new ocean to police since the annexation of the Pacific Northwest in 1846. As the ice surrounding the North Pole retreats, officials say, commercial shippers will be able to eventually move goods faster between Asia and Europe. More open seas will also give energy companies greater access to offshore oil and gas in regions controlled by the U.S. and estimated by military officials to be worth $1 trillion.

As the Polar ice cap melts and commercial traffic increases in the Arctic, the U.S. military must find the resources to patrol the area. In the meantime, it turns to a 40-year old ice breaker to get the job done. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

"The inevitable opening of the Arctic will essentially create a new coast on America's north," said Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Navy's top officer.

Even though the anticipated change is years away, Navy and Coast Guard officials say the U.S. needs to prepare now to patrol and defend the new waterways—designing ice-resistant ships and expanding Arctic naval exercises—when military scientists predict a new expanse of water freed of ice.

A new Navy strategy, set for release in coming weeks, says increased commercial traffic, oil and gas exploration and tourism will create new demands in the Arctic. The paper, a draft of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, notes the Navy lacks "operational experience" and ships properly outfitted for the extreme weather. It must also address poor satellite coverage.

Pentagon budget cuts, however, make plans for the new Arctic frontier difficult. "This is not a good time to be putting a lot of bills on the table," said Army Gen. Charles Jacoby, the top officer at Northern Command, the military headquarters that oversees the Arctic Ocean.

While the Pentagon budget remains large, military spending is falling faster than any time since the end of the Korean War. The Pentagon faces $31 billion in spending cuts this year and $42 billion next year.

In November, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the department must prepare to exercise U.S. sovereignty in the Arctic, despite budget cuts, and extend protection of the seas there.

For now, the defense of Arctic waters belongs to the Polar Star, the Coast Guard's single heavy icebreaker, and the service's medium icebreaker, the Healy.

"You can hear the ice continually scraping down the side of the hull. It drives some people nuts. But to us it is a very melodious sound," said Coast Guard Capt. George Pellissier, the commanding officer.

However melodious, barreling through the ice cap is tough on an aging ship. Constant shaking taxes the piping system, keeping the 145-person crew on alert for leaks, the captain said. The balky equipment includes computers to forecast weather; part of the ship's transmission was salvaged from a retired vessel.

With little money for new ships, the Polar Star is assigned double duty: working the Arctic in the summer and the Antarctic in winter.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard ordered the Polar Star, which was headed to Antarctica to resupply a research station, to help rescue a Russian research vessel stuck in the southern ice. The ship broke free before the Polar Star arrived.

Such rigorous demands may prove difficult for the old ship, Coast Guard officers said. Some military officials would like to see 10% or more of new Navy ships ice-hardened for the expected expansion of Arctic operations. Now, it has none. Hardening a Navy warship for Arctic seas could cost as much as $300 million, officials said.

Russia, by contrast, has 25 icebreakers, including six that are nuclear powered, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently promised to reopen old Arctic bases, a sign of Moscow's investment in the far north.

Some in the Navy and Coast Guard contend the U.S. will need as many as 10 icebreakers—at an estimated cost of $784 million per ship—to keep shipping lanes free of ice, as well as aid search and rescue missions and ensure safe travel for vessels.

The 40-year-old Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star in the Arctic this summer. The U.S. Navy is developing a new strategy for patrolling Arctic waters.
U.S. Coast Guard

Military scientists steer clear of saying why the ice is melting and any public references to global warming. But the military views the retreat of Arctic ice as fact. "Climate change has had a visible and direct impact on the Arctic region," concludes the forthcoming Navy strategy paper.

In 2012, ice coverage was more than a million square miles less than the historical average—a reduction equal to about four times the size of Texas, according to government and university scientists. The amount of ice was significantly greater in 2013, but the coverage was still sixth lowest in recorded history, according to federal officials.

"I don't have the luxury of having a political opinion on this," Gen. Jacoby said. "It has happened. And it needs to be accounted for."

While Antarctica is a rocky continent covered in ice, the North Pole is mostly a 13-foot ice cap over ocean. The ice grows in the winter, and melts in the summer. While there is variation from year to year, the summer melt is growing more extensive, according to military officers.

The five nations bordering the Arctic Ocean all have economic exclusion zones extending 230 miles from land, and the Law of the Sea Treaty, which the U.S. hasn't ratified, allows nations to claim even more of the continental shelf and undersea energy resources.

The long coast of Alaska gives the U.S. claim to a large economic zone in the Arctic. Just as the U.S. Army cavalry protected railroads in the American West, Gen. Jacoby sees a military responsibility in these emerging waters.

For the Navy, that means protecting new shipping lanes and making waters safe for energy and mineral companies. For the Coast Guard, it means responsibility for rescues aboard foundering ships or endangered oil platforms.

Shipping companies say they are in no rush to use the Arctic; some parts are too shallow for container ships. A spokeswoman for A.P. Moller-Maersk said the shipping company doesn't believe the route will be economically viable over the next 20 years.

Others are more bullish and believe the military needs to invest soon.

"We aren't prepared," said Heather Conley, a defense analyst who has written on Arctic issues for CSIS, the Washington think tank. "We have to make some hard resource choices. We keep trying to avoid making a decision. That is going to come back to haunt us."

Adm. Greenert said the Navy needed to "get in tune" with the industry before any big spending decisions.

Coast Guard officials say traffic in the Arctic Ocean is expanding. The service tracked 240 ships operating off northern Alaska last year, compared with 190 in 2011. A ship from China last year used an Arctic sea route above Russia to shave two weeks off the time needed to reach Europe.

"Maritime commerce is happening at a much faster rate than people realize," said Rear Adm. Thomas Ostebo, who commands the Coast Guard's Alaska district. "All this activity gives opportunity for calamity."

The Navy began its Arctic operations during the Cold War. American nuclear-armed subs cruised under the Arctic ice in a cat-and-mouse game with the former Soviet Union.

Ships supplied U.S. and Canadian early warning stations that watched for Soviet missile or bomber attacks. The Coast Guard polar icebreaking fleet near the height of the Cold War included seven smaller Wind-class ships and one Glacier-class vessel. But as the fleet of World War II era ships aged, they were retired, replaced in the 1970s by the Polar Star and its sister ship, the Polar Sea, which is now used only for spare parts.

Military officers said despite growing tensions with Russia elsewhere in the world, there is no re-emerging Cold War in the Arctic, beyond what are viewed as routine military exercises by Russia in the Bering Strait, the passage close to Alaska that separates Asia and North America.

The U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., has run a series of war games to find new ideas for defending the emerging waterways.

The Navy predicts that by 2025, commercial traffic will be able to navigate swaths of the Arctic Ocean for several months a year. By 2040, it estimated that waterways will be navigable much of the year, requiring "sustained operations in the region."

To meet these goals, according to the draft strategy, the Navy is developing expanded Arctic training plans and improved weather forecasting and communications equipment.

Growth in Arctic shipping traffic prompted the Coast Guard to spend $90 million on the Polar Star for system upgrades and to rebuild the engines, an overhaul expected to give the icebreaker at least seven more years of life, said the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress.

The Polar Star was originally supposed to be in service for 30 years. Its age and a lack of funding had prompted the Coast Guard to put the ship into semiretirement: afloat but not operational.

This summer, on its first voyage to the Arctic since 2001, veterans on the crew found a very different ocean.

"Back in the day there were a lot more challenges, more multiyear ice, you had to pick your spots through it," said Coast Guard Cmdr. Kenneth Boda, the ship's executive officer. "This summer we set a course and go…We were teaching our young officers to drive around the thicker stuff but we could have gone right through."

The changing conditions make the Arctic particularly unpredictable.

Lt. j.g. Paul Garcia, on his first icebreaking mission this summer, steered the Polar Star into what the Coast Guard calls a "blind alley."

In the Arctic, moving ice floes can bunch up to form mountainous ridges of ice. When three or four floes ram together, the ice can be so thick that even the Polar Star—capable of 75,000 horsepower—can't smash through, creating a blind alley.

"He picked an area to go where four floes had come together, forming a parking garage of pressure ridges," said Capt. Pellissier, who has served many of his 27 years in the Coast Guard on ice-breaking missions, including three tours on the Polar Star since 1999. "It is easy to get your icebreaker stuck."

"It was a learning experience," Lt. Garcia said, who had to "wiggle" and ram the icebreaker back out.

The Arctic trip was also a test of the Polar Star, to ensure the ship was able to break through the ice as well as it did in the old days. "The ship still runs great," Lt. Garcia said. But ice isn't as challenging. In the late 1970s, the ship broke ice 25-feet thick, Cmdr. Boda said. The thickest ice the crew saw this summer—outside the blind alleys—was 16 feet thick.

The real challenge is no longer ice but aging equipment. On its summer voyage, the ship's weather computers failed to start up, prompting the crew to rely on forecasts emailed from the Navy, according to crew members.

The system connecting with weather satellites was installed in the early 2000s, before the Polar Star went into semiretirement. It had a busted antenna, now replaced, and obsolete software still awaiting an upgrade.

"It just needs a good bit of TLC," said Marine Science Technician First Class Brian Carr.

Military analysts say the question facing the Pentagon is whether the ice will melt before the military spending freeze thaws.